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Published Jul 2013
512 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
Flora Hansen calls herself a medium and makes a living by pretending to commune with the dead. But after a gruesome murder at a rural home for wayward girls, Hansen begins to suffer visions that are all too real. She calls the police, claiming to have seen a ghost, but only one detective puts aside his skepticism long enough to listen: Joona Linna.
Linna has spent more time at the scene of the crime than any other detective would. The case seems obvious on the face of it: One of the girls at the home escaped in the middle of the night, leaving behind a bloody bed with a hammer under the pillow. But why does Hansen insist that the murder instrument was a stone, not a hammer? And what's the story behind the dark red grain of sand, almost like a splinter from a ruby, stuck beneath the dead girl's fingernail? As Linna refuses to accept easy answers, his search leads him into darker, more violent territory, and finally to a shocking confrontation with a figure from his past.
Just as Lars Kepler's The Hypnotist and The Nightmare did, The Fire Witness has spent months at number one on the Swedish bestseller lists. As the newspaper Dagens Nyheter put it, you start the thriller "on the subway home, keep reading at the dinner table, and then don't stop until well into the wee hours." Kepler writes with the force of Stieg Larsson and the plotting of Jo Nesbø. The Fire Witness is an unflinching page-turner, sure to join the ranks of its predecessors as an international sensation.
"Starred Review. A rich, nuanced tale, ideal for beach reading, just as long as the beach doesn't harbor too many shadows." - Kirkus
"Gripping... False leads, administrative difficulties, and hints of a case involving Linna's own family keep the pages flying by." - Publishers Weekly
"A Brilliant thriller." - Norrköpings Tidningar
"It's like falling down a stream, you get caught up and can hardly breathe." - Dagens Nyheter
"It all goes at maximum speed and it´s impossible to hit the brakes before reaching the end." - Skånska Dagbladet
"I have never before come across something as thrilling as the works of Kepler." - Barometern
This information about The Fire Witness was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Lars Kepler is the pseudonym of the critically acclaimed husband-and-wife team Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril and Alexander Ahndoril. Their number-one internationally best-selling Joona Linna series has sold more than fourteen million copies in forty languages. The Ahndorils were both established writers before they adopted the pen name Lars Kepler and have each published several acclaimed novels. They live in Stockholm, Sweden.
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